


... won’t hurt you

by quarter_life_crisis



Category: Bleach
Genre: Grimmichi Secret Santa 2020, M/M, amnesia fic on steroids, hollow pack instinct bullshit, im so tired i did the fucking lowercase title thing, my unending adoration for yuzu shines through even when shes not a listed character, no beta we die sleep-deprived and with many regrets, preslash???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarter_life_crisis/pseuds/quarter_life_crisis
Summary: Grimmjow takes a long, long time to wake up from the effects of Askin’s Gift Ball. When he finally does, something is missing.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54
Collections: GrimIchi Secret Santa Exchange 2020





	... won’t hurt you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Plouton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plouton/gifts).



> you guys should’ve seen my fucking face when giza revealed that i was gonna be secret santa to the very object of my simping, my muse, my very own beta, **plouton** herself. this was def both the best and WORST person i could’ve gotten, because for ploot i wanted to write something absolutely PERFECT and, well, obvs that didnt happen but i did write this

“You sure you don’t want me to go get it?” Ichigo asks. 

“Don’t you dare leave me,” Yuzu replies, although it sounds more like “don ’d oo dare leab ‘ee”. She punctuates her sentence with a truly powerful sneeze. He hands her another tissue. 

“I can be quick, you know. You deserve something sweet right now.” Because she really does. Ichigo could say he wouldn’t wish this on his worst enemy, but he has encountered some seriously shitty people. His sister, however, is not one of them. 

She only shakes her head, and then groans as the headache punishes her for moving. “Do de odder does?” she asks, lifting her left foot into his lap. He dutifully unscrews the little glass bottle again, starting with the big toe and working his way down. 

“You could always text Jinta. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind delivering.”

An indecisive grumble. 

“He doesn’t have to come in. He shouldn’t, I mean, you’re probably super contagious.”

Yuzu makes a regretful noise, as if he didn’t already know that it’s just a matter of time before he’s the one hacking his lungs out. The noise turns into a wet coughing fit complete with a truly harrowing phlegm-swallow tacked on at the end. Ichigo pats her foot sympathetically. 

As he resumes his work with the tiny brush, he hears the rustle and taptaptap of a phone being fished out from under the covers and used to send a emergency candy request. All they have left in the cupboard is mixed salted nuts, much too painful to swallow. 

Matte peach-coloured lacquer now adorns all ten of Yuzu’s toes and Ichigo lifts up her feet slightly so she can inspect his work. She gives him a tired smile. 

He rubs her soles of her feet a little, but then her phone beeps and Jinta’s reply text wipes that smile clean off. 

“No dice?”

“Says Gibbjow wog’ up.”

The bottle of nailpolish clatters to the floor. 

“Oh. Yeah, that’s probably… pretty chaotic. Still sure I shouldn’t go get you anything?”

Her facial expression tells him he didn’t quite reach the casual tone he was aiming for. 

It’s okay though, it’s. Alright, he did kind of want to be there when Grimmjow regained consciousness, but it’s… Yuzu needs him. They do face masks. His heart rate slows back down eventually. 

An hour passes, and then another, and two more, all without Ichigo receiving a single call or text from Urahara, so presumably everything is fine. No news is good news, all that. 

Yuzu falls asleep, and he can’t leave her to wake up alone, but as the sun starts dipping lower, he finds himself imagining Grimmjow coming by himself, challenging him to a fight to prove he’s still got it, or dropping by just to check… that Ichigo made it out in one piece too. 

By the time Karin comes home from soccer practice, he all but hurls himself down the stairs. 

“I gotta go get something for Yuzu,” he explains as he jumps into his shoes, before Karin’s even gotten her own off, and she says she literally passed the supermarket on her way home and he could’ve just texted and he says something about not wanting to bother her - he hopes it isn’t rude - and then he’s off. 

He tells himself he isn’t gonna stay long, is actually just going to stock up on candy and try his damndest to get that discount Jinta always gives Yuzu, and then… say hey to Grimmjow, if he happens to still be around. And then return home. No big deal. Concern for an ally isn’t lame, he shouldn’t even be needing an excuse, really.

Ichigo gets about three steps into the shop before a cane is slammed across his torso like the restraint of a rollercoaster. It’s a pretty apt comparison paired with the fucking whiplash he gets whenever he enters Urahara’s residence. 

“Wh—”

“Please listen carefully. You are not to tell him anything. I am aware I cannot forcibly remove you from the premises - at least for any significant amount of time - so allow me to make one thing perfectly clear, Kurosaki-san. This is entirely for his own good. You must understand the potential trauma Grimmjow-san risks, along with the potentially nuclear reaction this might elicit. For the good of Karakura town and in particular for our arrancar guest, we all m—”

“Hold u- wait a damn minute! What trauma?”

“ _What trauma?_ ” Yoruichi scowls, leaned against the corner of the room, arms folded around herself as tightly as they go. Meanwhile Urahara shows no physical signs of tension in the slightest, which is... not necessarily comforting. He lets Ichigo push down his cane easily, fully capable of keeping him right where he wants him by the power of his words alone. Ichigo resents this fact, even as the unsettling words affect him just the way they’re supposed to.

“What the hell happened? Didn’t you say you’d healed him?” 

The last time he’d seen Grimmjow, the arrancar was unconscious but outwardly back to normal, laid out like another gigai in that back room that can only be described as a lab. “Now we just wait,” a slightly sweaty, seriously exhausted Urahara had told him. That was weeks ago. 

Presently the shopkeeper’s mouth has snapped closed and from beneath the brim of this striped hat, keen eyes are watching him curiously.

“Well?!” 

Ichigo can sense Grimmjow’s spiritual pressure inside the living quarters, not as strong as before Askin, but considerably stronger than during his last visit to the shop, not bleeding reiatsu or anything, so what..?

“It appears I have made an ass out of you and me, as they say. Given your timing today, I thought you had already been _told-_ ” The wry emphasis placed on this word is what makes Ichigo wonder where Ururu and Jinta are right now. 

“Ah well, nothing to do about it now. As I said, Grimmjow-san currently has a chance to start over, and it is simply not our place to take that from him. He may remember, in his own time, but until - or rather, even _if_ \- that happens… as I said, Kurosaki-san, you mustn’t tell him a thing. Caution is presently the best strategy.”

“So… he’s okay, then? What doesn’t he remember?”

It takes just a moment too long for the shopkeeper to reply. 

“Physically, he appears to have made a full recovery, although it’s a bit early to say for sure.”

“Urahara. _What doesn’t he remember?_ ”

The shopkeeper thinks he looks unreadable, but Ichigo can see the fucking cogs turning underneath that stupid hat, trying to see how little information he can divulge, how he can manage the situation most effectively. 

“Being dead.” Yoruichi states, quietly, cataclysmically. 

She has yet to move out of her hunched position in the corner. 

As Ichigo makes frantic, disbelieving eyecontact with her, he realizes she isn’t scowling at him at all - she’s been scowling at Urahara this whole time. Suddenly her folded arms give the impression of restraining herself against him. When has Yoruichi ever not been in agreement with Urahara’s plans, when it comes to the bigger picture?

“This has nothing to do with any of that stuff,” he realizes out loud. Slate grey eyes narrow dangerously. “You just want control over him, you bastard. This is a damn experiment to you!”

The man doesn’t even deny it, just steamrolls right over the statement.

“It’s good to see that you’ve become more perceptive, Kurosaki-san, but then you also must realize the significance of the situation. The opportunity to prevent a hollow already on the highest level of evolution from ever taking the lives of innocents, discovering to what extent hollow instincts affect the behavior of one who no longer needs to feed to stave off regression - to find out what truly separates hollow from other—”

“Cut the bullshit. Prevent him from taking lives? How many souls do you think he’s already consumed to get where he is, you- you’re gonna just not tell him he’s eaten people?! Tell me the truth now, or I swear to God, I’m gonna,” 

He looks around at the store where his sister buys her candy, where Ururu and Jinta live upstairs… where himself and his friends have been nursed back to health by Tessai time and time again, recuperating after battles that the man in front of him “helped” them into without giving them all the facts. Ichigo doesn’t know what he’s gonna. Suddenly he feels very tired. 

“Did you do this to him.”

Urahara’s face does a thing, a micro-expression he has no idea how to interpret, but he has a sinking feeling the guy actually approves of Ichigo thinking to accuse him.

“Kurosaki-san, I swear to whatever you wish, I did nothing to cause this.”

He finds all he can do is just breathe. Ichigo has no fucking idea if he’s telling the truth, never has, has always had to just _trust_ and sure, Urahara gets a job done. But there’s no war now, no bigger picture. No threat - aside from Grimmjow, possibly, apparently, but based on his current reiatsu, he’s nothing they can’t take, even if he had some sort of outburst. 

“I’m going inside the house.”

“Kurosaki-san, I must insist—”

“Oi. What’s going on?”

The voice is rougher than he remembers it, but still instantly recognizable. Three heads turn in one synchronized movement. 

Ichigo would not have been able to tell anything was different. The frown, the deceptively laid-back posturing, the sharp eyes… it’s Grimmjow as he knows him. 

“Ah, Grimmjow-san~! Welcome to my little shop! It’s not very lucrative, I admit, but seeing the smiles on the dear children’s faces as they get their favourite treat, well, I couldn’t imagine a more satisfying occupation.”

The bullshit story goes completely unacknowledged, aside from a very subtle sigh from Yoruichi’s corner of the room. Grimmjow doesn’t even spare Urahara a glance, instead being totally fixated on… Ichigo. 

There’s no recognition as far as he can tell, even though he really. _Really_ wants there to be.

“Hey,” he starts, but Urahara doesn’t know when to fucking stop.

“Oh, this man is leaving now - a very rude customer, and I use the word customer quite generously here. I’m not opposed to haggling per se, but this is simply getting insulting and I must ask that you take your “business” elsewhere.”

“Do I look stupid to you?” Grimmjow asks, and now Ichigo can start to see it, or at least thinks he can. As defensive as always, but with only a droplet of the usual confidence. He looks… not _un_ -dangerous, but the kind of dangerous that has nothing to do with gran rey ceros and more like bar fights and misdemeanors. Distracted, more dull. Ironically enough, he looks sort of hollowed out.

“No, I’m... I... Thanks for nothing,” Ichigo says in Urahara’s direction, and it’s a shitty line and a stupid, dramatic exit. 

This doesn’t mean he’s agreed to follow anyone’s orders. It just means he needs to really, actually think this one through. 

He only gets a few steps down the street before someone fucking _psssst_ s him from an alley. It’s Jinta, slouched over a sketchy-looking paper bag that presumably contains Yuzu’s favourite sour gummies. 

“Did I get you in trouble?” Ichigo sighs, as he steps closer to the world’s least inconspicuous candy pusher. The kid sort of shrugs, looking not too hot himself. His eyes are glued to the ground, and Ichigo knows Jinta to be one of the most obnoxious ‘eye contact to assert dominance’ type of teenage boys around. 

“Hey. You okay?”

“You should’ve heard him when he noticed that jaw mask in the mirror.” 

A few years ago, Ichigo would not have been surprised to hear him take on a grim, better-someone-else-than-me type of pleasure through a sentence like that, but today the words are just plain grim. He thinks the kid might have a nightmare coming tonight. 

As Ichigo mutely grabs the paper bag, he thinks… _No. No, that’s definitely not something I should have heard._

**Author's Note:**

> sooooooo guess who got too carried away with setup to make time for the actual fucking grimmichi interaction 👋 ripperoni plouton, you deserved a better xmas present, but i definitely will finish this !!! with ONE (1) more chapter - my wip is crying in the corner. 
> 
> now all that’s left to say is I LOVE YOU SO MUCH and i really wanted to write fanfic for ur fanfic but all my ideas for that were nsfw because i am 💩 and the event didn’t allow that ahahhaahaa ☠️☠️


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